A Matter of Perspective

Nietzsche: “Perspective [is] the basic condition of all life.”

To see anything involves observing from a specific vantage point. The philosophical worldview called postmodernism got a big push in motion by Nietzsche’s challenge to the long-standing (mythological) idea that humans – especially those who believe in God – have a view on reality that is absolute and universal. We have stories that tell of the genesis and apocalypse of all things. And because those stories were dictated by divine revelation and not just “made up,” they give us a privileged observation-point that is really outside of time and absolutely true.

Priests, prophets, and theologians were our sacred knowledge brokers for the longest time, and we trusted them because they were closer to God’s Eye than the rest of us. In the nineteenth century, that delusion fell apart. Or, as Nietzsche would say, we at last awoke from the trance called metaphysical realism, which holds that God and the soul are nonphysical but nonetheless real things.

If other people in other lands have stories similar to our own, then either (1) theirs are borrowed and likely corrupt copies of our original stories; or (2) other divine beings and realities exist that our catalog doesn’t account for; or (3) there really are different names and costumes for the same metaphysical realities; or (4) all of our stories – theirs and ours – are perhaps not arching out and sticking to real things after all. Maybe our stories are more projections than descriptions.

It doesn’t sound outrageous to speak of stories as narratives we make up. Opinions are more obviously made up; but even theories – the best scientific theories included – are accounts that humans fashion to make sense of reality. And every kind of story (opinions, myths, and theories) is composed – put together, made up – by someone occupying a very specific location in relative space and time.

Perhaps thousands of years ago an especially gifted artistic type formulated her perspective into an opinion that her friends found particularly amusing. Around the fire that night, and for many nights thereafter, she was pressed into reciting and elaborating it for the enjoyment of the other tribe members. She added a dramatic setting, a cast of characters, with a rising action, riveting conflict and a cathartic denouement. The group loved it. Soon they were taking parts and acting out the plot, with costumes and props and the whole nine yards.

Years passed, then decades and centuries. As it happened, the tribe migrated, intermarried, and otherwise got caught up in the multiplying concerns of “modern” life. The myth was still recalled every once in a while, as friends relaxed over their beers, but by now it had become completely detached from its earlier anchor in ritual and was free-floating. It sounded more like an explanation than a story in the poetic-artistic sense; its appeal was more cognitive than emotional. It had become a theory.

You know where I’m going with this, don’t you? If perspective is, as Nietzsche asserts, the basic condition of all life, then all we have is “the view from here” – wherever I am, wherever you are. We don’t have the full picture. We can’t see through the eyes of God. And I am ready to agree with Nietzsche that we can’t through God’s eyes because “God” is a projection of our own opinions-myths-theories. Does that mean there is no “divine mystery,” no “ultimate reality,” no “ground of  being” or “creative source” of all things? No, I don’t think it does. Reality, the Real, is.  But what it is requires that I formulate an opinion, tell a story, or state a theory – all of which is, has been, and forever will be generated from a given vantage point, a very limited outlook, and along an extremely short angle on the mystery. However incomplete, it’s all we have.

So tell me how it seems from where you are …